Anyone doing "Needledrops"?

schwarcw

We have a constant active discussions about the quality of vinyl material vs digital, which sound better, which equipment, etc. I am researching the process of transferring music from my vinyl source to the computer, then to CD. Some refer to this process as "needledrops". I was wondering about the success of this process. Does it sound better than a manufacturer's CD? Does it sound worse? There is software out there to remove the clicks and pops, etc. Some folks have reported the need to perform some compression during the transfer to CD. I was looking for the Forum's advice as lots of folks here are using vinyl and enjoy the convenience of digital.

Ultimately, I can see where transferring from vinyl to a music server is going to be popular. This is just my opinion but it may offer the best of the analog sound from the vinyl source, the elimination of jitter and other CD limitations, plus a great convenience of programing selections using the computer as the source with your audio equipment. I also think the computer will be able to perform and allow users to experiment with some equalization software where the computer can perform some of the preamp functions. Give you that "tube" sound for example.

I'd enjoy your experience and/or perspective on the subject.

BlueMDPicker

Several years ago, I started through my LP collection with the intent of rendering many of them to electronic format and on to CD. It's very time consuming since, obviously, you can't spin your LPs at multiples of normal speed like you can when ripping CDs. You're going to spend somewhere approaching 3x the play time of the LP to "engineer" it to final production. You'll also need massive disk space (not as problematic as it was a few short years ago) to save your work in .WAV format before you go to CD or other compressed formats. Once I had the work on CD, I never could bring myself to delete the finished (lead-in, lead-out, pop/click/hiss processed) .WAV files--so, I have tons of disk space still devoted to the project.

Fidelity of the conversions is quite good. As with any sound reproduction, the better the source, the better the final output. I used a relatively inexpensive software suite from DAK to record, edit, and process. I'm sure there are other apps out there, but I'm not familiar with them. Signal path was TT, phono pre, computer sound card (via dual phono to mini stereo cable.)

If you'd like, I can PM you a list of LPs I have converted. You can compare the list with your personal media collection and, if there's a match, I can send you something to compare in person.

hearingimpared

Carl I've use tick & pop removing devices in the past and unless the technology has become infinitely better, I wouldn't use them because they have a detrimental impact the music. Maybe it's just me but when I am listening to vinyl, I'm so used to just focusing on the music that I hear past the ticks, pops or surface noise.